AMEX Holds Platinum at 165,000 Yen and Screens for 5-Million-Yen Spenders
- AMEX keeps its Platinum annual fee at 165,000 yen while overhauling perks
- Rejecting the 'cheap platinum' price war, it competes on total experience
- Top perks now require 5 million yen in annual spending
- Quiet cutbacks like ending automatic travel insurance hide behind the upgrades
As cut-price platinum cards proliferate, AMEX plays the opposite hand: the Platinum fee stays at 165,000 yen with refreshed perks—competing on 'total experience' rather than price. Behind the gloss sit two defensive lines: automatic travel insurance is gone, and the biggest perks now require 5 million yen of annual spending. Translation: richer benefits, reserved for those who swipe enough. It is textbook customer selection—pushing fee-paying light users out of the perk core raises per-customer economics while cutting benefit costs, marking the shift from card-issuance volume wars to single-customer economics.
Cardholders should recompute their spend and redemption rates: under threshold rules, an underused platinum card is a liability. Watch whether rivals copy the threshold model.